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Welcome!

Welcome to Ludology, an analytical discussion of the hows and whys of the world of board games. Rather than news and reviews, Ludology explores a variety of topics about games from a wider lens, as well as discuss game history, game design and game players.

We post a new Ludology episode every other week. In these episodes, hosts Erica Bouyouris and Sen-Foong Lim deep-dive into a single topic within game design, often with a well-regarded guest from the game industry. We generally focus on tabletop game design (mainly board games and RPGs), but we often pull in experts from all forms of games, from video games to escape rooms to slot machines.

On weeks where there is no flagship Ludology episode, we will alternate between two smaller mini-sodes. Erica and Sen are happy to announce that Sarah Shipp of Shippboard Games and Stephanie Campbell of TTRPGKids will be joining us for the next year, providing additional content between our longer episodes.

Sarah's segment, Thinking Beyond Mechanisms, is a monthly feature that dives deeper into the other aspects of games beyond the dice and cards we're all familiar with.

Stephanie's segment, TTRPGKids, explores how parents and teachers can use role playing games with children in the home and in the classroom.

We hope you enjoy the additional content!

Our History

We aim for most Ludology episodes to be timeless, so you are welcome to explore our entire catalog. Most of it should age quite well. The podcast was started in 2011 by Geoff Engelstein and Ryan Sturm, with Mike Fitzgerald taking over for Ryan in 2015. Gil and Scott joined the show in 2017 when Mike stepped aside, and Emma joined in 2019 when Geoff ended his tenure as host. Emma left in 2021, and Erica and Sen joined us. Since then, Scott stepped down in 2022 and Gil will be hanging up his mic in 2023, leaving Erica and Sen to carry on this amazing legacy.

Erica and Sen are working to bring new voices to Ludology and have some great things to announce as gaming expands to include even more people!

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We currently have 3 "First Listen" series that will go out to Patrons well in advance of the audio being released to the wider audience.

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Nov 13, 2022

Erica and Sen meet up with Jason Perez (Shelf Stories, cultural consultant on Puerto Rico 1897) to talk about cultural consultation, define some of the most prominent terms, and talk about how we can design better games while considering cultural impact.

 

Timestamp

Note

Link

00:00:50

Shelf Stories

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnaZ7055IWOdm8XCJfFRDcw 

00:01:20

Puerto Rico 1897

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/367272/puerto-rico-1897 

00:09:30

Uncle Ben dies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dre4TsXm_68 

00:09:35

Batman’s parents get shot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAyxY5hF3ZE

00:12:58

Andreas Seyfarth

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/117/andreas-seyfarth 

00:13:01

Reiner Knizia

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/2/reiner-knizia 

0015:05

Jason’s critique of Lost Ruins of  Arnak

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU7Mqg3XS4U 

00:15:15

Feast for Odin

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/177736/feast-odin 

00:15:20

Raiders of the North Sea

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/170042/raiders-north-sea 

0016:40

Puerto Rico’s Power Outage Issues

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/12/power-outages-puerto-rico-hurricane-fiona 

00:24:15

Cafe con leche

https://www.food.com/recipe/cafe-con-leche-puerto-rican-cafe-latte-114354 

00:24:34

In The Heights

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0CL-ZSuCrQ

00:29:21

“I Wish” songs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22I_Want%22_song 

00:29:49

Boriken

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/361178/boriken-taino-resistance 

00:30:01

The Taino people

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/what-became-of-the-taino-73824867/ 

00:32:06

Risk

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/181/risk 

00:33:01

Liz Davidson

(Beyond Solitaire)

https://www.youtube.com/c/BeyondSolitaire 

00:33:06

Jason Matthews (Twilight Struggle)

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/3877/jason-matthews 

00:36:43

Chip Theory Games

https://chiptheorygames.com/ 

00:37:53

Unconscious Mind

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/329500/unconscious-mind 

00:40:06

Jason’s Discussions re: the Designer Diary for Gorinto

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNMzATMGYc8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1wAgg99O0w

00:46:00

Dicetower’s Skymines vs. Mombassa Comparison 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n-vJbGqctE 

00:48:27

Ludology Episode with James Mendez Hodes “Orc-kay Computer”

https://ludology.libsyn.com/ludology-247-orc-kay-computer 

00:49:56

Root

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/237182/root 

00:50:16

Tauren and Native American Imagery

https://www.academia.edu/13052741/World_of_Warcraft_the_Tauren_and_Native_American_Imagery 

00:52:01

Owl Pizza Chef

https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-illustration-owl-chef-pizza-cute-image-white-background-funny-cartoon-vector-illustrations-picture-memes-jokes-image69033436 

00:52:16

The X-Men as :GBT Champions: From Outcasts to Elites

https://rabbitholemag.com/the-x-men-as-lgbt-champions-from-outcasts-to-elites/ 

00:55:02

Bruno Faidutti’s article on Postcolonial Catan 

https://faidutti.com/blog/blog/2017/06/02/postcolonial-catan/ 

0055:28

Cascadia

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/295947/cascadia 

0056:43

Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmcA9LIIXWw 

00:56:45

Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nXGPZaTKik 

00:57:18

The Wedding Singer’s rendition of “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB3PdPMjeIY 

00:57:30

Howard Zinn’s “The People’s History of the United States”

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2767.A_People_s_History_of_the_United_States 

00:58:28

The Buggles “Video Killed the Radio Star”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8r-tXRLazs 

01:01:24

Tostones

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/16768/puerto-rican-tostones-fried-plantains/ 

01:01:33

Maduros

https://www.dulcetscintilla.com/platanos-maduros-aka-fried-sweet-plantains/ 

01:02:39

Greg Loring-Albright

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/89308/greg-loring-albright 

01:03:01

One Stop Co-op Shop

https://www.youtube.com/c/OneStopCoopShop